Strike Fever

Early this month hundreds of clandestine pamphlets began circulating in Spain. Trumpeted one: "We demand the vital minimum salary of 75 pesetas a day and equal pay for women. We must protest the ridiculous wage increases that have been handed to us ... agitate for the minimum basic salary and a democratic Spain." Some pamphlets urged workers to stage a demonstration in mid-April. Rebellious Madrid University students who had demonstrated against the government of Dictator Francisco Franco in February (TIME, Feb. 20) planned new protests of their own, timed to break out just as Madrid played international host to a UNESCO meeting.

Last week, as the zero hour for the student demonstration approached, all Spain was alert, eyes expectantly concentrated on the big cities of Madrid and Barcelona. But it was in the Navarre mountain-encircled city of Pamplona (pop. 73,000), famed for its bullfight fiesta, that the trouble started.

Too Little Too Late. A wildcat strike of 6,000 transport, industrial and catering workers, paralyzing Pamplona, took the authorities by surprise. Said Civil Governor Carlos Arias: "Order will be re established in a firm and inflexible manner." Though Arias threatened that workers would lose their social benefits, and called out the Guardia Civil, Pamplona's workers paraded the city's sunny streets in their best clothes. The strike fever spread to the Basque city of Bilbao (scene of a 1953 stoppage of shipbuilders), Tolosa, San Sebastian and other northern towns. Thus far only workers in small dispersed industries were affected, but when metalworkers in Barcelona walked off their jobs, the government got tough. Army General Felipe Acedo, governor of Barcelona, promptly jailed strikers and closed the struck factories.

The strikes were the direct result of Spain's skyrocketing inflation, brought about to some extent by heavy U.S. spending in Spain, and in part, by the damage done to crops by this year's severe spring freezes. Last July Spanish workers took their case to Dictator Franco himself, asked for a basic minimum wage of 75 pesetas a day (approximately $1.77). Said Franco, a medievalist in economics as in politics: "Nothing can be gained if we artificially raise salaries. That rise would be followed by a corresponding rise in prices, and you would be much poorer than you are today." Some 700 delegates (representing an estimated 8,000,000 Spanish workers) went back muttering to their sindicados. Last month, when Labor Minister Jose Antonio Giron announced a 20% hike in minimum basic salaries, this belated and inadequate increase was a chilling disillusionment to millions of workers.

Republicans Remember. Last week an estimated 50,000 workers were on strike in the north of Spain. Clandestine strike propaganda cited the profits made by Spanish enterprises and at least one illegal poster exhorted: "Spanish Republicans, do not forget this day!" Thousands of additional guards were called out to reinforce the already formidable Franco police forces in northern Spain. In a country where strikes are forbidden, the absence of arbitration machinery makes it difficult for the dictatorship to settle the strikes in any way but to crush them.

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